Matthew 23:27

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which outwardly appear beautiful, but inwardly are full of dead men's bones, and all uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but inwardly ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.

THE SIXTH WOE

Here is another figure drawn from the customs of the day and the practice of the scribes and Pharisees, who customarily whitewashed graves in order to make them more easily visible and to prevent one's stepping on one of them accidentally or unknowingly. Such graves were a fair figure of the Pharisees, who were outwardly clean and beautiful, but inwardly were full of wickedness. The implications in such a comparison by the Lord are profound. The Pharisees, with all their pomp and glamour, earthly glory and prestige, outward beauty and ostentation, were, for all that, actually dead in the eyes of Jesus. They were dead spiritually and morally. Although their inward decay was concealed with an attractive veneer of political and social respectability, it was not hidden from the penetrating knowledge and vision of the Son of God, who knew their hearts.